


Zucchini

by betts



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexuality Spectrum, F/M, Fluff, Past Sexual Abuse, Queerplatonic Relationships, Roommates, a little bit of becho, best friends to married best friends, body image issues, chubby clarke griffin, past flarke and clexa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Clarke draws HVAC plans for an architecture firm and Bellamy drives the city’s special needs bus, and they text each other all day every day, and live together. The problem, obviously, is that Bellamy has been in love with Clarke for as long as she can remember, which they don't talk about except for his weekly-ish marriage proposals. She’s never said no, but she also hasn't said yes.





	Zucchini

**Author's Note:**

> From AVENwiki: "A queerplatonic (or quasiplatonic) relationship is a relationship that is not romantic but involves a close emotional connection (platonic) beyond what most people consider friendship. The commitment level in a queerplatonic relationship is often considered to be similar to that of a romantic relationship. People in a queerplatonic relationship may be of any romantic or sexual orientation. A partner in a queerplatonic relationship is called a zucchini."
> 
> Although I've done a fair amount of research, I'm drawing a lot from my own experiences for this fic. I think asexuality is a broad spectrum with many variations, and QP relationships can take a lot of different forms. If your experience with asexuality and QP relationships differ from what's in this fic, that's fine! There is no wrong way to be ace, and this fic is not meant to wholly encompass a very wide and nuanced topic.
> 
> Clarke is aro and aceflux/greyace. Bellamy's sexuality can best be described as "ride or die."

“We should get married,” Bellamy said.

Clarke globbed jelly onto a piece of Wonderbread. It was 7:15 in the morning. “Sure.”

“You don’t mean that.” He pulled a chicken and asparagus dish out of the fridge which he had diligently made the night before, as well as four other pre-prepared lunches for the rest of the week. His hair was still wet from his shower, tucked under his hat, uniform pressed neatly. Clarke hadn’t washed her jeans in three weeks and she was wearing her only clean blouse, which she found at the back of her closet. It fit poorly, smelled like mildew for some reason, and if she sat the wrong way, you could see her bra through the gaps in the buttons.

“Eh.” She slapped the peanut butter half on top and shoved the sandwich into a baggie.

“I’ll try again later.” He kissed her temple. “Have a good day. I love you.”

She licked a dollop of jelly off the side of her finger. “Love you too.”

Basically everyone in the world wet themselves over Bellamy Blake. Clarke didn’t get it. When Bellamy was five, he got his head stuck between the banister bars at Clarke’s house and Abby had to use a whole tin of Crisco to get him out. When he was nine, Clarke dared him to smoke a cigarette and he puked on his shoes. Thirteen, he grew an actual, literal foot in six months, and was in so much pain he cried all the time, like a baby. Sixteen, he started dating Gina and that was when things began to slip. Seventeen, Clarke went off to college and she and Bellamy stopped talking, but then she moved back home after graduation, and they ran into each other at a board game night Raven was holding. Now Clarke drew HVAC plans for an architecture firm and Bellamy drove the city’s special needs bus, and they texted each other all day every day, and lived together. The problem, obviously, was that Bellamy had been in love with her for as long as she could remember, which they didn’t really talk about except for his weekly-ish marriage proposals. She’d never said no, but she also didn’t say yes.

On Friday afternoon, she received a text: _Miller invited me to a party??_

 _We are old,_ she replied. _Who throws parties anymore_

_ikr_

Every Halloween, they sat in their front yard passing out candy, going nuts over babies dressed as pumpkins and bumble bees, and watched _Hocus Pocus_ while eating leftover chocolate they’d intentionally stashed away. New Year’s Eve, they were usually both passed out by eleven. Clarke couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to a proper party. Bellamy had a much more rounded social life than she did; in addition to the friends they shared from high school, he also had his work buddies, who went out together to blow off steam at least once a week, batting cages or bowling alleys or barcades, and through his work buddies he made more friends, so he was always being invited to things. It had been bad enough when they were teenagers, being the unpopular best friend of the most popular boy in school. Now, a decade later, it was still just as annoying.

 _What kind of party?_ she asked.

_No idea but he offered to drive_

_Drunk Bellamy??_

_Maybe_

_I miss drunk Bellamy_

She didn't drink much. She got stupid when she was drunk, and just smelling alcohol gave her a hangover. She was probably the least fun person she or anyone else had ever known, a chubby sloth, living with a human jet engine who slept maybe five hours a night and could befriend literally anyone just by beaming his nuclear-blast smile at them.

She had tried waiting up for him that night, but ten stretched to eleven and then midnight, and she finished her umpteenth rewatch of _Ragnarok_ , so she went to bed, only semi-worried, telling herself he was a grown man, even if he did normally notify her of every single thing that ever happened to him. He texted her during his bathroom breaks, relayed the plot of movies while he was actively in the theater watching them, and sometimes started up a new conversation before bed, despite being across the hall. He couldn’t text while he drove, but he kept a running record of all the things he wanted to share with her, so when his route was over, she would often get dozens of texts in a row, random thoughts and observations, questions, opinions. Gina had once told her, in private, that Bellamy was sometimes “too much” and “kind of clingy” and she wished he would tone himself down. Clarke had offered a strained smile and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” To her, Bellamy had always been just the right amount.

She heard him come in around two. He ran into something and whispered, “Fuck.” Their apartment was so small that she could hear everything, even Bellamy rolling around in bed on nights he couldn’t sleep. She listened as he made his way through the apartment, the jingle of keys on the coffee table, thump of his jacket over the back of the couch, sigh of shoelaces as he took off his boots. He paused between their bedroom doors, and opened hers instead of his.

“Clarke?” he said, drunkenly. “Are you asleep?”

She refused to open her eyes. “Yes.”

“I just wanted to tell you, I love you.”

“I love you too, Bellamy.”

“Do you really?”

She opened her eyes. He was sagging on the doorframe, cheek smushed against it, pouting. His hair was a floppy mess, and he was wearing his work slacks and an undershirt.

“Yes, really,” she said.

“Okay.” He pushed himself away from the door, wavering on his feet. “Goodnight, Clarke.”

“Goodnight, Bellamy.”

He didn’t move.

“Go to bed, Bellamy,” Clarke said.

“Okay.”

He looked at his feet and pouted harder, the exact image of his five-year-old self when he’d want to do something stupid that they’d probably get in trouble for, and Clarke would say no, and he’d look all sad at her and she’d finally give in. Then they’d get in trouble and Bellamy would say, “Why did you let us do that?”

Clarke sighed, and scooted over, lifting the covers in invitation.

Bellamy dove into bed. Honestly, she was surprised it had taken this long. When they were kids and he spent the night, Abby made up the guest bedroom for him, but he’d always sneak into Clarke’s room and crawl into bed with her. They pulled the covers all the way over their heads and Bellamy told her stories until she fell asleep.

Bellamy pulled the covers up over their heads and said, “Better.”

“Hi, drunk Bellamy.”

“Hi, sober Clarke.”

Part of her thought this was maybe inappropriate, considering they were best friends, and she had been reliably informed that this was the kind of thing best friends were not supposed to do. His face was close to hers, just inches away, light bleeding through the blanket from the street lamp outside.

“Did you have fun?” Clarke asked, whispering even though she didn’t have to.

Bellamy nodded. He paused, then shook his head.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. The blanket moved with him. “Too old for parties. And I missed you. Should’ve just come home.”

“I’ll come with you next time.”

“You will?”

“No, but it sounded like the right thing to say.”

He reached between them and started playing with the strings of Clarke’s pajama pants. “I met a girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Asked me out for a drink tomorrow.”

“That’s great.”

He shrugged again. “It’s whatever.”

“Don’t be like that.” She swatted his hand but it didn’t deter him. He used to be a Boy Scout, so any time spent with a string-like object resulted in knots that could not be untied by mere mortals. “What’s she like?”

“Tall. Pretty, I guess. She owns a pilates studio. Her name is Echo.”

“A bendy entrepreneur. Jackpot.”

He stared at her, and seemed more sober than he had just a moment ago. “You really don’t care?”

“Care about what?”

“Nevermind.”

He wrapped the string around his finger until it met the waistband of her pants. His body heat was making the space unbearably hot, and she couldn’t help but think he was upset with her now.

“I have a secret,” he said. “But you have to promise not to tell sober Bellamy I told you.”

“Promise.”

“I wanna marry you.”

“That’s not a secret. You ask me all the time.”

His fingers ticked up between her pants and shirt, skirting over her skin. “I think you think I’m kidding.”

“I know you’re not kidding.”

“Then why don’t you take me seriously?”

She couldn’t explain it to him. She could hardly explain it to herself. When she thought about it too long, she gave herself a headache. All she knew was that if she married Bellamy, he would be settling, giving up. She was missing something she would never be able to give him, something he probably needed. She could only ever be pieces of the person he wanted.

“I don’t think we should talk about this when you’re drunk,” she said. “Or ever, probably.”

“Fine,” he said. “Okay.”

She thought he was finally grumpy enough to leave, but he stayed, fingers still playing over her skin, tucked under the hem of her shirt now, which almost tickled, but she refused to let it show. She didn’t like her stomach being touched, which, even at her thinnest, she’d always had a roll of fat, and now, much larger, a few of them, enough that she didn’t wear bathing suits and avoided looking at herself naked in the mirror, and her mother was always forwarding diet and fitness articles to her.

He inched closer, until their noses were touching, and his hand slipped over her hip. She was afraid to breathe. With anyone else she would be squirming away, getting upset while trying to cover it up with awkward laughter. She surprised herself with how comfortable she was, being touched by him. His lips brushed against hers. She refused to meet him in the middle but also didn’t move away, too curious to see how far he’d go. He pressed his lips more firmly to hers, undeniably a kiss now, albeit a guileless one, no more than what he’d offer her cheek in parting. Just as she was getting used to the idea — they’d done everything else together, why not this? — he pulled away.

“Goodnight, Clarke,” he said, and slinked out of bed.

The next day, Saturday, they acted as if nothing had happened. Bellamy was hungover so Clarke made him breakfast and attributed his silence to his headache. Once he felt better, he got dressed and went to lunch with Octavia, and Clarke left to run some errands, and when she got home what felt like an eternity later, Bellamy was in the shower, which was weird because he was a morning showerer, and it was only when she heard the buzz of his electric razor that she remembered the girl he met at the party who had asked him out to drinks.

Clarke was flipping through her Netflix options when Bellamy came out of his room in a grey button-up and slacks, hair combed back. In all the time they’d lived together, going on six years, Bellamy had only been on a handful of dates, girls Octavia or Miller had set him up with. The way he described them later, they all seemed perfect — smart and interesting, successful and beautiful — but Bellamy never saw any of them more than once, and if he’d had sex with them, Clarke didn’t know.

He was buttoning the cuffs of his shirt. “How do I look?”

“Very handsome,” Clarke said.

He pulled his jacket from the peg by the door and his keys from the table, then leaned down and kissed her cheek, lingering half a beat longer than usual. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Have fun.”

Clarke put on a random period drama she found since Bellamy wasn’t around to complain about it, and Raven started texting her some hot gossip about the idiots she found on Tinder. Clarke never judged her for her hit-it-and-quit-it lifestyle, was in fact envious that Raven could find pleasure in the bodies of strangers, but as it was, she found the idea of having a one-night stand herself repulsive. Eventually Raven stopped texting back, and Clarke took that to mean she'd finally found a mimbo worth a quick lay.

Just as Clarke was beginning to wonder when Bellamy would be back, he texted, _Won’t be home tonight._

The period and apostrophe concerned her.

 _AYY GET IT,_ she replied, with a clap emoji.

 _Thanks. See you in the morning._ The three heart emojis that followed soothed her only slightly.

As promised, he returned the next morning, shortly after she’d woken up. His hair was back to its usual chaos and his shirt was unbuttoned and untucked. A hickey rested an inch above his collarbone, and she stared at it from her position at the kitchen table as he poured himself a cup of coffee. In all twenty-five years they’d known each other, nothing like this had ever happened. Gina had been a fastidious woman with a firm rule against PDA, and while Clarke was sure she and Bellamy had had sex, probably frequently, he never talked about it. This was the first time Clarke had visual evidence that Bellamy Blake had gotten laid.

He took a seat across from her and picked up her iPad. She'd given him her passcode once, and he used his access to set his fingerprint to unlock it.

“So?” Clarke asked. “How was it?”

His eyes stayed trained on the screen. “It was okay.”

“Are you going to see her again?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great.”

Finally he glanced at her, but it was more of a glare. “Really?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? You’ve been single for like, ever.”

“So have you.”

“We’re not talking about me.”

He lowered the iPad and his glare turned glarier. “Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why don’t we ever talk about you?”

“We talk about me all the time.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Of what?”

“That I spent the night at some woman’s house.”

“Of course not.” It was the truth, but the reality was more complicated than that. First and foremost, she was happy for him. But she was also sad — they were stuck in a strange and bittersweet position. She knew, on an atomic level, that Bellamy would never love anyone more than her. Her body knew it in the same way it knew to breathe without needing to be told. So no, she wasn’t jealous; this Echo chick didn’t stand a chance. She was an understudy, second string, a silver medal. Bellamy might text her, and fuck her, and grow fond of her, but he would never be in love with her. That spot in his heart belonged to Clarke. And yet Clarke would never, could never, feel the same.

“Do you want me to be jealous?” Clarke asked sharply.

“I want you to be something.”

“Well sorry, I’m nothing.”

He softened a little. “You’re not nothing.”

This was the closest they’d ever come to talking about _it,_ the elephant between them, the thing Clarke refused to name and that she worried Bellamy didn’t want to know.

“Have you ever been in love, Clarke?” he asked.

If she’d been standing, she would have needed to sit. As such, she occupied herself thumbing at a chip in her coffee mug. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Were you in love with Lexa? Finn?”

She had dated Finn her freshman year of college. He was her first everything. He’d jumped into it all head-first, without talking it over with her. One minute he was walking her to her dorm after their third date, and the next, he was following her inside, kissing her, taking off her clothes, all without asking, and his tongue was too busy being in Clarke’s mouth for her to say no, and she didn’t know how to say it anyway, because she did like him, and didn’t want to upset him or make him think she wasn’t interested. They had sex, and after, Clarke got dressed and went to the bathroom and cried in a stall for fifteen minutes.

She continued dating him after that as some kind of challenge to teach herself how to want sex. She likened it to any other skill. At first, she had hated drawing; the images in her head never made it to the page the right way, but after years of practice, she could draw not only the things around her in a realistic way, but images that came to her mind, and found immeasurable joy in it. But the more sex she had with Finn, the more complacent she became to it. She did, however, succeed in acting like she enjoyed it, and learned to orgasm by sheer force of will and extreme concentration rather than anything he did to her. He disliked condoms so she got a prescription for birth control, which had several negative side-effects including making sex extremely painful, which Finn pretended to care about but ultimately kept fucking her whenever he wanted, without foreplay or lubricant. She was also gaining weight, the freshman fifteen to start, then thirty and forty and fifty, which Finn reacted to by turning off the lights when they had sex, avoiding looking at her, questioning her food choices, and giving her information pamphlets for the campus rec center. She was quick to brag to her friends about how amazing he was in bed, how happy they were together. She did think she was in love — she felt sorry for him, for his dark past and his deep emotional lows, that he struggled in nearly all of his classes but tried so hard, and deep down, he was a good, sweet boy who deserved to be loved. He let her take care of him.

“That’s not love,” Lexa had said a year later, when Clarke explained it all. “That’s codependency. You can’t be in love with someone you pity.”

Clarke had been so conditioned by Finn to give her body away when she knew it was desired that when she did the same in her new relationship, Lexa pushed her away and asked, “What do _you_ want?” It was the first time Clarke had allowed herself to consider it. She wanted closeness, to believe she was loved and adored for exactly who she was, but that seemed impossible. It was easier to figure out what other people wanted and become that instead, so they could at least love her for her ability to love them. The closest she had ever come to what she truly wanted in a partner had been her friendship with Bellamy, but she couldn’t figure out how to replicate that, and as an adult, what they'd had seemed juvenile. Her father was dead and her mother was a successful doctor with a debilitating Fentanyl addiction that kept her from feeling or expressing any emotion. Until Lexa, Clarke believed that love was a thing for children, something you eventually grew out of, and you had to accept living the rest of your life on the fumes it left behind.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Lexa said. “I’ll take the passenger seat, and you drive us wherever you want to go.”

So Clarke tentatively navigated them through what she thought she wanted, which involved a lot of hanging out as friends, study dates, flirting. Lexa didn’t so much as hug her unless Clarke initiated it. And while Clarke wasn’t attracted to Lexa — though she was gorgeous, and Clarke enjoyed looking at her — she liked that Lexa was attracted to her, and would express that attraction if Clarke asked, either through words or touch. Lexa was the only person who had ever made Clarke feel beautiful.

Clarke lost weight, never again found her high school figure, but hovered in the awkward space between regular and plus-size. Lexa understood Clarke’s insecurity, and found practical solutions — they bought pretty lingerie that made Clarke feel more confident, went to burlesque shows with dancers who looked like her. Lexa worshipped her body and eventually Clarke learned to accept it, even believe that Lexa found her attractive.

Their breakup was one of practicality. Clarke needed to go home after graduation. She knew she was not meant for a big life, knew she would never be happy in a city, climbing social and professional ladders, and it was Lexa’s destiny to do just that. They decided to stay friends, and agreed that, should their paths cross again, they would be able to return to what they once were. Lexa still sent the occasional text, launching conversation with an inside joke, and they’d fire back and forth rapidly for hours, sometimes an entire day, before falling silent again for months at a time. In retrospect, their relationship had been good, but it had its problems. There was the power dynamic they never discussed, and because of that, nearly all of Clarke’s feelings — again, she thought she was in love — pivoted around seeking Lexa’s validation. Despite Lexa's constant reassurance, support, and solution-oriented attitude, Clarke never felt truly comfortable and secure in the relationship, always feared making a single wrong step and losing Lexa’s good graces.

“I did love them,” she said to Bellamy, and felt strangely like she might cry. “It just — didn’t look like other people’s love.”

She knew what Bellamy wanted, love like the kind you see in Hallmark movies, happily ever afters. Coming home after a long day and stripping down, burying exhaustion inside each other. Passion. All things Echo could probably offer, things Clarke wanted him to have.

“Were you _in_ love with them?” he asked. “Were you attracted to them? Is there something they had that I don’t?”

She clenched her teeth to keep her chin steady. Looked down into her empty coffee mug and let her hair hide her face. If she were younger, if she didn’t know better, she could at least pretend, like she had with Finn. She could act like a girlfriend. She knew all the lines. She could try to make him happy, be the woman of his dreams. But she knew that if she sacrificed her happiness for his, they would both be miserable, and eventually break each other’s hearts. She loved herself and Bellamy too much to put either of them through that.

“I don’t like sex,” she said, and got up with a start, chucked her cold coffee in the sink. She locked herself in her bedroom and pulled her blanket all the way up over her head. It wasn’t even true, not really. She had what she considered Schrödinger's libido: she liked sex just fine once she got turned on, but to get turned on, she needed to be touched, and she had no intrinsic desire to seek out touch, except with a select few people with whom she didn’t mind cuddling or kissing, like Bellamy, and then, once the cuddling and kissing started, she could potentially want to have sex. But that begged the question — could she ever truly consent to sex if it required such a lengthy flowchart?

The doorknob rattled. “Clarke. I’m sorry. Can we please just talk about this?” When she didn’t respond, he added, “There’s nothing you can do or say that would make me stop loving you.”

That’s the problem, she thought, but wouldn’t say it, and eventually she heard him go into his own room.

Bellamy didn’t bring it up again. He started texting less and less, and seeing Echo more and more. He stopped letting Clarke know the nights he wouldn’t be home, weekends only at first, then during the week sometimes. He kept a spare uniform at Echo’s apartment, changes of clothes, a toothbrush. Clarke wasn’t concerned; sometimes they both needed space. Their friendship had endured years of absence as well as extremely close togetherness. No matter how far one of them got, they would always return to each other.

Months later, they were dancing around each other in kitchen, fixing breakfasts, stealing sips of a single shared coffee, packing lunches, when Bellamy asked, “It would mean a lot to me if you’d meet her.”

“Who?” Clarke had a pizza cutter in her hand for a reason she couldn’t remember.

“Echo.”

“Oh.” She decided to use the pizza cutter on her turkey sandwich, which was surprisingly ineffective, and resulted in a minor mustard catastrophe. “Yeah, sure.”

“Miller’s friend is having another party Friday. Maybe we could get dinner and all go together.”

They were out of baggies so Clarke put her sandwich in a gallon freezer Ziplock, and upended a family-size bag of potato chips into it also. “Sounds fun.”

He kissed her cheek and squeezed her hip on his way out. “Great. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

By Friday, Clarke had totally forgotten the plan, and when Bellamy came home from work, he asked, “Why aren’t you ready?”

“Ready for what?” Clarke was hours-deep down the rabbit hole of Martian timekeeping discourse on a forum linked in a Wikipedia discussion page.

“We’re meeting Echo in twenty minutes.”

Clarke remembered a time when she dressed up to go to parties, owned three different kinds of Spanx, endured high-heels and could free-hand a perfect wingtip. She blew dry and straightened her hair, showered at least daily, twice in summer, made sure her nails were always manicured, and owned literally thousands of dollars in makeup.

Tonight she slapped on a t-shirt dress and a pair of leggings and brushed her teeth. She also grabbed a scarf to complete the “I would rather be at home, please do not talk to me” look.

They went to a steakhouse, the tacky franchise kind, and Echo was already there, holding the round buzzer. She kissed Bellamy hello and shook Clarke’s hand. He was right: she was tall and pretty. Clarke liked her right away, not in an immediate-chemistry way, but a probably-not-a-Republican way.

“I like your contour,” Clarke told her.

“I like your scarf,” Echo said.

Bellamy was visibly nervous, and refused to open his menu, busy as he was trying to navigate conversation between the three of them. It was apparent that whatever manly front he put on for Echo was not something he was comfortable being around Clarke, which amused her, seeing him waffle between happy, goofy BFF Bellamy and strong, stoic BF Bellamy. Echo was quiet, even when both of them tried to rope her into the conversation. She checked her phone every few seconds and though she politely paid attention to the goings-on, she seemed to have no interest in participating, like attending a Clarke and Bellamy museum exhibit. After a couple beers and a demolished porterhouse, Bellamy gave up on trying to include her, and his focus turned entirely to Clarke as they traded stories and inside jokes, occasionally offering a note of context for Echo. Clarke nearly choked with laughter at one point, and they got so loud that patrons around them began to stare.

When the server came to ask how they’d like the check separated, Bellamy told her to put him and Echo on one, and Clarke on another. Clarke excused herself to the restroom, and when she returned, Bellamy’s arm was around Echo’s shoulders. It made her feel a thing, paying her own check, Bellamy looking at Echo adoringly, but she shoved it away.

They drove separately to the party, Clarke and Bellamy in one car, Echo in hers, which seemed to irk her but Bellamy didn’t notice.

“So what do you think?” he asked. It was his car, but Clarke was driving since he’d had a couple beers.

“She’s nice.”

“You can do better than that.”

“She’s tall and pretty, like you said. She seems to like you a lot.”

“That’s it?”

“She didn’t give me much to go on. I assume she’s more lively when it’s just the two of you.”

Bellamy didn’t respond, his silence a shameful admission, Clarke added, “But the sex is good, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, but he seemed upset now, and she didn’t know why. “There’s that.”

Miller’s friend’s party was packed by the time they arrived. Clarke hadn’t seen anything like it since college, dozens of people drinking and smoking, beer pong in the garage, a Mario Kart tournament, s’mores around a bonfire.

The first few minutes were agonizingly awkward, the three of them navigating to the kitchen to find drinks, then holing up in a corner together, not saying anything, until a friend of Echo’s pulled her away, and Echo dragged Bellamy with her, and Bellamy offered Clarke an apologetic glance that said he would be back in a minute. So Clarke was left alone, Solo cup in hand full of whatever had been in the keg. As the minutes ticked by she considered ordering an Uber home, but then a guy came up to her and handed her a stack of jello shots. He had a mordant disposition that Clarke found immediately appealing.

“I’m Murphy,” he said over the music. “This is my house.”

“I’m Clarke. Bellamy’s friend.”

“Want a tour?”

“Sure.”

The house was strange, like a suburban castle sort of, German architecture and a half-dozen extensions added to the property. He took her in a loop around the first floor, up to the second which had a number of bedrooms and secret passageways, into the attic, then down into the basement which had a real coal furnace built in 1908. The basement was quieter than upstairs, and Clarke started telling Murphy about her job as a mechanical drafter, and eventually they made it back up to the balcony and watched over the bonfire and beer pong. Bellamy and Echo were nowhere to be found, and she wondered if they were having sex in the one room whose door was shut, even if that was ridiculous, considering they were adults in a relationship who could have sex whenever they wanted, and didn’t need to hook up at someone else’s party. Murphy had a flask he offered, and she drank from it each time he passed it over, until, hours later, she knew his life story — juvenile detention for breaking into a pharmacy, dead parents due to medical malpractice and suicide, pulled himself up by the bootstraps and got through college with a poli sci degree, and now he was applying to law school — and realized she was very, very drunk.

She started divulging her own story, starting with the points they had in common, disdain for shitty American healthcare and the opioid epidemic, and moving into her own college experience, Finn and Lexa, which led her inevitably to her current pseudo-crisis, that she was happy her best friend, “who shall not be named,” she said, was finally in a relationship, even though she suspected he secretly wanted her and no one else.

“So what’s the problem?” Murphy asked.

“The _problem_ is —” She paused, unsure how to put it into words. “He deserves someone who can give him everything he wants.”

“What does he want that you can’t give?”

“Sex. I mean, I _could,_ but it wouldn’t be sexual sex, you know? Like he couldn’t be like, hey sexy lady, let’s do the do.” She wiggled her eyebrows for emphasis. “And I wouldn’t be like —” She slapped the back of her hand to her forehead. “Take me, Daddy.”

Murphy took a long drag from his cigarette. “There’s a whole lot to unpack there.”

“Let’s throw away the fucking suitcase.” She chucked her empty Solo cup into the yard. It hit some dude in the head and he yelled “Hey!”

“So you’re not attracted to him,” Murphy said.

“Not him or anybody else. Except Rachel Weisz. Rachel Weisz can raw me.”

“Have you considered that you might be ace?”

She frowned and squinted at him.

“Asexual.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t mind sex like, at all. You know. Once it’s happening. And sometimes I like it. And, TMI, I masturbate. Like, porn is good. And three days a month I get really horny but then it goes away and I get my period and it’s like, oh, that makes sense.”

“But you don’t want to have sex with anyone.”

“I don’t _not_ want to have sex. I just don’t want to have sex.”

“Can you even hear yourself?”

She took the flask from him and drank. She was pretty sure it was 151, which did not bode well for her hours-from-now self. “No.”

“Thought experiment. Describe your ideal relationship.”

“Me and Bell — he who shall not be named, exactly as we are, except maybe we kiss and hold hands and cuddle sometimes, but not share a bedroom because I need my _space,_ you know? And we could get married, maybe. And maybe have sex _sometimes._ Maybe. But not sexy-sex.”

“Sexy-sex.”

“Sex people have because they want to have sex.”

“What other sex is there?”

“Sex that you have because you want to feel close to someone. Like there’s sex that just feels like loving someone.”

“Making love.”

She pulled a face. “Ew. I mean, okay, you go to a store and they have something small and cute that reminds you of somebody, so you buy it for them. Like that. Or someone you love is sick, so you come hang out with them and bring medicine and soup. Doing something nice, because it feels good and makes them happy, but isn’t an ob — oblig — required. In relationships, _real_ relationships, you’re supposed to be all shmoopy and have sex and stuff. But I just want like, a really good bro to fingerblast me before I get my period.”

“I get it,” Murphy said with a nod.

“You do?”

“A relationship with sex as like, dessert. Don’t need it to round out a meal, but it’s an option when you’ve got a sweet tooth.”

“But he who shall not be named wants the real deal. Romantic date nights. Tons of sex. Marriage. Kids. And I mean, I want marriage and kids too. And date nights don’t seem so bad, like we already do that, kind of. And sex can happen, maybe, even if it’s not often.”

Murphy stared at her.

“What?” she asked.

“I know we just met and whatever, but you’re kind of a moron.”

“I’m not attracted to him, Murphy. Could you ever be in a relationship with someone who wasn’t attracted to you?”

“I’m ace. My girlfriend is ace. So, yes.”

“Oh. Sorry to mansplain sexy-sex to you.”

“It’s okay. Emori is sex-repulsed. I’m —” He shrugged. Somehow, she understood.

Her mind slipped after that, and a couple people came out onto the balcony and started talking to them, and eventually Murphy was called back in to deal with “a situation potentially involving a small family of raccoons.” Clarke wandered around looking for Bellamy and ended up hugging a girl with pretty red hair and telling her, “You are so beautiful, and I am not attracted to you, but you are so, so pretty.”

The woman, Luna, patted Clarke’s back and thanked her, and asked if she needed a bottle of water, which Clarke said she did, and Luna procured an unopened Dasani from somewhere, and Clarke downed it. She went around asking if anybody had seen a “cute freckled boy who answers occasionally to Bellamy” and his “tall-glass-of-water girlfriend.” Finally someone pointed her to the side of the garage, where Clarke went obediently, and found two large-ish shadows hissing at each other. She thought she heard, “— tell me the fucking truth, Bellamy. Don’t yank me around like this.”

“There you are.” Clarke stumbled toward them and tripped on a bump in the dirt, or her own foot maybe, and Bellamy caught her. She sagged onto him. He smelled so good. Maybe that was the problem, maybe pheromones attracted people to each other, and there was something wrong with her olfactory bulb. Maybe brain surgery would make her want to have sexy-sex. But also, she didn’t want to _want_ to have sexy-sex. She just wanted everyone to be okay with the fact that she didn’t want to have sexy-sex. 

“We should talk about this at home,” Bellamy said, and that was when she realized she’d said all of that out loud. To Echo, he added, “I’ve gotta —”

“Yeah,” Echo said, and she did not sound happy.

Clarke pushed away from Bellamy and threw her arms around Echo. “You are so great and tall and pretty. I’m so glad he has you. So glad you can give him —” A bubble rose in her throat. “Give him what he wants.”

And suddenly she was crying, and Bellamy’s hands were on her and he was saying soothingly, “Let’s get you home, come on.” He ushered her around the house to his car, opened the door for her and helped her get in. She couldn’t figure out how to get the seatbelt on so he took it from her and reached over and did it himself, and while he was right there, she kissed his cheek and started crying again.

On the drive home, she cried so hard she couldn’t breathe, and Bellamy’s hand was on her knee, and he was asking what was wrong but all she could say was, “I’m so relieved.”

“Relieved about what?”

There’s a word, she thought. There’s a word for me.

But she couldn’t say that, so she wept.

At home, Bellamy tried helping her into pajamas, but she was too self-conscious, so she made him turn his back while she focused really hard and did it all herself, but soon after, ran to the bathroom and puked like she hadn’t done since she was a freshman, and had drunk constantly to make having sex with Finn easier.

Bellamy sat on the edge of the tub and held her hair and rubbed her back. He hummed a little song like he did when he made brunch on Sunday mornings, and changed the oil in her car, and drove his bus. She cried into the toilet.

After she was done and had brushed her teeth and felt marginally better — though her throat was raw and her face was puffy from tears — Bellamy helped her to bed.

“Stay,” she said, so he turned off the lights and climbed in with her and pulled the covers up over their heads.

Finally everything was still and silent and exactly as it should be. She even reached out to Bellamy and put her palm over his heart, and he put his hand over hers.

“I really do like Echo,” she said. “And I’m happy for you.”

“I know, but —” He ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “I think it’s over.”

“Nooo,” she whispered. “Why?”

“It’s not fair to her, being second place. At first it was just the sex, but then she wanted more, and figured out, tonight actually, that in all other ways I was taken.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“What does being in love feel like? How is it different than friends?”

He didn’t answer right away, and in the silence, Clarke started to drift off to the steady thud of his heart.

“I guess with friends, it’s like, they’re standing beside you, walking with you. But in love, they’re in front of you. They’re all you can see.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t that make them an obstacle? Like aren’t they in the way?”

“I guess so. I think romance is overrated anyway.”

She was still just drunk enough not to be anxious about physical affection, so she scooted closer, and he put his arm over her, and she allowed herself to relax in his embrace, and feel loved.

The following Wednesday, Bellamy and Echo broke up, and he was sad, because he really had liked her, and had also been kind of an asshole about the whole thing, considering he went into it knowing his heart belonged to someone else, so Clarke took him out to dinner, his favorite sandwich place, and after, they walked around town, not really saying anything, which was odd because Bellamy usually never stopped talking. Clarke took his hand in hers, and they watched the sunset over the river.

About a week later, they were doing their usual morning chaos routine, and Bellamy said, “Have a good day. I love you,” and when he went to kiss her, she turned her head slightly, just enough so it looked like maybe an accident, and caught his lips with hers. It was only a brief peck, but after, he stared at her wide-eyed as if the clouds had parted and St. Peter was welcoming him to eternal bliss. He bumped into the coffee table on his way out, and had to come back because he forgot his keys.

That evening, while fixing dinner, she teased him about the dimple in his chin, which, despite being ridiculously cute, was something he was glaringly self-conscious about, so he grabbed her side and started tickling her, and she thrashed and fought and screamed at him to stop, whacked him repeatedly with a spatula, but he had backed her up into the counter, and when he stopped, they were very close. His eyes flicked down to her lips, and she gave him a little nod, and he kissed her, a real kiss this time, which felt both extremely weird and also freeing, like what little tension had been held between them finally dissipated.

The timer broke them apart. His lips were all red and Clarke could feel a flush all the way from cheeks to chest, which she internally blamed on the stove heat. Dinner was business as usual, both of them firmly disregarding whatever had just happened, but before bed, he kissed her again, this time in the hallway between bedrooms. The kiss lasted far longer and was much sweeter and slower than the first. This was also where things got confusing — Clarke still had a body, and that body responded in the way that bodies tend to do. If Bellamy right then had walked her into either room and started taking off her clothes, she would have let him, and they would have had sex, and it probably would have been pretty okay, maybe even good. But she didn’t want to give Bellamy the wrong idea, that she would ever have physical desire for him as a person, would want to fuck him by looking at him or thinking of him or being near him, anything outside of him touching her in a way anyone could touch her, and she would react the same.

He didn’t do any of that, though, only pressed his forehead to hers and said his usual, “Goodnight.”

“Night,” Clarke said, backing away into her bedroom, getting a bizarre thrill out of the dark look in his eyes. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

The kissing and hand-holding continued, and turned into a small routine for them — a kiss goodbye before work, another when she came home, where he’d take her purse out of her hands and back her up against the door as if just eight hours apart (albeit texting constantly through that time) was too much. Then after dinner, they’d settle on the couch to watch TV, him on one side and her the other, and somehow they’d find their way together, limbs entwined in an easy cuddle, and he’d pepper her with small kisses until finding her lips, and the show would be forgotten.

She could feel her desire shift and distort as the month went on. Some nights it only felt good and sweet and real to be so close to him, to be able to express her love in this way, equal but different to all the other ways she showed him love. Other nights, as her period approached, she found herself moaning into his mouth, aching for him, shifting against his thigh in an effort to release the tension refusing to lie dormant. One night she guided his hand between her legs, and he rubbed her over her leggings, patient and insistent, until she came apart beneath him. After, she panicked, and immediately sunk to the floor between his knees and started fumbling with his belt, nearly in tears, her hands shaking, an apology poised on her tongue.

He held her wrists and said, “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

She started crying again, in fear and confusion and relief, and he pulled her onto his lap and held her. She still couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t risk ruining this lovely thing they’d built together by admitting that she didn’t want _him._ She just wanted. Indiscriminate. Her body worked so far from her mind sometimes that it felt like being two entirely different people, one who sought touch, was starved for it in fact, and another who recoiled from it. How could anyone possibly love someone like her, who was at constant war with her own body?

That night, he went to bed with her, and asked the first thing he’d ever asked of her since starting this new thing between them, if they could sleep naked together, and she was nervous but she said yes, though she didn’t allow him to look at her, only crawled under the covers and then took off her clothes. She greedily watched him undress and admired his body, its perfections and flaws. The last time she had seen him naked was when they were kids, four or five, and Abby had given them baths together before bed. There was even a picture somewhere tucked in a photo album, Clarke with a hill of bubbles on her head, staring at the camera while Bellamy, oblivious, was playing with a blue boat.

He climbed into bed and held her against his chest, and she fell asleep easily, wondering how long this could last.

She awoke slowly to the dim light of dawn through her window, grateful for a Saturday without any plans. Bellamy was rubbing his palm up and down her side, and she could feel his erection at her back. She was still keyed-up, could feel her own arousal pooling between her legs. She met his movements instinctively, her body rapacious while her mind was still dull from sleep. His cock slid between her thighs, nose and mouth pressed against her neck, and he asked softly, “This okay?”

She nodded and pushed back harder. He gripped her hip and ground against her. The head of his cock bumped against her clit on each pass. It shocked her, how close she was to coming already. She wanted him inside her, to fill her, to take her body for his pleasure. It was a disgusting and heady thought, that she might be used by him. It went against everything she believed in her waking hours, everything she’d worked so hard to learn about herself, the rules she’d carefully laid so someone like Finn would never happen to her again. She was a being of constant contradiction.

She was no longer on birth control and had no condoms in her room. His hand was on her stomach, caressing her least favorite tummy roll. Neither of them would probably ever understand what exactly Clarke wanted or why she wanted it, why the fire inside her sometimes diminished entirely and sometimes reignited of its own accord, why she couldn’t seem to fall in love, why the thought of one-night stands or emotionless sex made her want to puke. Why Bellamy was perfect for her, but she wasn't perfect for him.

Her orgasm swept through her. She clutched her sheet in her fist and muffled a shout in the pillow. She positioned her hips just so, body moving entirely out of her control, so his cock was pushing into her little by little on each pass, dipping in and sliding back out. She felt so empty.

“Please,” she said.

On the next pass he paused. She clenched her thighs together tightly and he moaned against the nape of her neck. Her cunt fluttered around the head of his cock, the dying shocks of her climax, and finally, with a short cant of his hips, he slipped all the way inside. He stayed there, still, and ran his hand up her belly to cup her breast while he pressed kisses to her sweat-soaked shoulder.

“I love you,” he said.

She held his hand and brought it to her lips, kissed his palm, his wrist. They lay in stillness, reveling in the physical closeness which they’d already achieved in every other way. If Bellamy could be happy with this, just this, sex as a gift, sex for release, sex that Clarke may never initiate or desire for herself, then they could make this work.

He pulled out, and soon a warm surge met her lower back, which sent another flare of pleasure through her. She reached between her legs and concentrated on the sound of him stroking out the rest of his release, the trickle of his come over her skin, and peaked again, this time unable to cry out, so overwhelmed by the heavy pulse of her body that even her heart seemed to stop.

After, he asked to see her, really see her, so she let him pull the blanket away. She lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling so she wouldn’t have to see his gaze sweep over her, though she could feel it, and feel too the tentative touch that trailed from her throat, between her breasts, and came to rest at her navel. She expected him to say something, some affirmation or reassurance, tell her she was beautiful, but his awed silence spoke for him, said more than any words could.

They made breakfast together in a conversational lull that wasn’t quite easy, nor was it awkward, but saturated. She fell into her own thoughts as they ate, about their reunion six years ago, and how she’d seen him at Raven’s and immediately fled to the backyard in shame of her new body. She could see on people’s faces every time she ran into someone she used to know, the blip of “oh, she gained weight” even if it carried no ridicule, just a neutral observation that she looked different than she used to. But even that was too much to bear, especially with someone like Bellamy, who was so widely desired. She held no resentment toward him for losing touch, which had been in her mind more his fault than hers, because she made a point their senior year of high school to invite him to outings and check in on him, but he was so wrapped up in his relationship with Gina that he had very little time for anything else. Clarke’s freshman year of college, she continued touching base with him, but the conversation always fell flat, and the few times she asked if they could schedule a phone call to get caught up, he seemed amenable but made no move to cement plans. They spent the next few years only interacting through liked Facebook and Instagram posts. She had been surprised to find out from Raven during junior year that he’d broken up with Gina. Meeting him again after all that time apart was as thrilling as it was terrifying. She was afraid he’d changed, grown cold or dark, but when he finally approached her, he had nothing but excitement in his eyes, though it was clear he had gotten better at putting on his tough-guy mask. He’d gained a little weight too, though it was in both muscle and fat, the way men are allowed.

That night, they’d found a couple lawn chairs and talked until Clarke’s voice was hoarse and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to drive home. Even Raven came out after everyone had left and said she was going to bed. The sky lightened and cicadas began rattling in the trees, and just when Clarke had finally gotten up to leave, Bellamy apologized for losing touch, for prioritizing his girlfriend over his best friend. He promised it would never happen again, and admitted too that what he had felt for Gina, even at its most intense, never compared to the closeness of his friendship with Clarke.

Not even a month later, Clarke was moving into his apartment. Bellamy had a spare bedroom where he let Octavia crash occasionally, but since she’d started dating Lincoln, his apartment had become her go-to instead. At first Clarke was scared of getting to know Bellamy again, of losing him again, but found quickly that she could trust him just as she used to, and he had not only learned from his mistakes but had learned to learn itself. His narrow-minded criticism and dismissal of anything that challenged his worldview was, she felt, his biggest flaw, but he’d tackled it in their years of absence. She wondered sometimes if driving a bus was a kind of meditation, and he was forced by occupation to introspect, or maybe it was spurred by the grief counseling he went to in the wake of Aurora’s death. He googled the things he didn’t know, asked questions before jumping to judgments and conclusions and anger, was comfortable saying “I don’t know.” He deferred to Clarke’s expertise on most things, and the few times they disagreed on politics or philosophy, they would sit down and research the topic together until they came to an understanding. The things that used to annoy her about him now became points of endearment. He left dirty glasses out, but she had no problem putting them away. He needed lights on all the time and liked the white noise of a TV in the background, and she learned to get used to it. He kept the apartment too cold, so she wore his hoodies.

His first “I love you” had been surprising but not entirely unexpected — in the Blake household, you were not allowed to express affection at all. Aurora Blake died without ever once telling her children she loved them, so Bellamy made it a point to make his love known, in case, he said repeatedly, grinning, he got hit by a bus. The first proposal was a joke. They were doing their taxes together on their separate laptops. Bellamy looked up at her, a mountain of W-2s and deductible expense paperwork between them, and said, “Do you have any idea how much money we’d get if we were married?”

It became a running gag, Bellamy pointing out all the ways their lives would improve if they got married, financially and socially, and posed the argument that if Clarke were to get seriously injured, her mother would be the one to call the shots, and did Clarke really trust Abby to do what was best for her? Marriage would make Bellamy her next of kin, and her his. Bellamy, being a government employee, also had substantially better health insurance than she did. She could admit that it would improve their present lives, but her internal counter-argument always involved Bellamy finding someone better, and the drag of having to get divorced when he finally fell in love again.

“Are you attracted to me?” she asked after breakfast, passing a soapy frying pan over for him to rinse and dry.

“Yes.”

Hypocritically she felt reassured. She expected him to ask her the same question, but he only put the pan away, and waited for her to hand him a plate.

“Are you in love with me?” She scraped at a spot of dried yolk.

“I’m more than in love with you.”

The plate slipped from her hands and splashed into the water. “More than?”

“Whatever’s a higher rank than in-love, I’m that.”

She stared into the sudsy water, the plate sinking to the bottom. Not once had she ever thought about it like that. This whole time she’d thought she couldn’t feel _as much_ as other people, that her ability to love went from one to ten, and everyone else could go up to eleven. She imagined love as a liquid carefully measured into a series of cups. Now she had no picture at all; love was an ethereal thing, nebulous, stretching and distorting inwardly and outwardly, between two people or more. It couldn’t be touched or held, restrained or defined.

“I always figured you felt the same,” he said, “but now I don’t know. I thought you were just afraid of me running off again, so I’ve been trying to show you I won’t.” He rested his forearms over the sink. It was much easier having this conversation not looking at each other. “Dating Echo was a stupid experiment. I wanted to see how you’d react, like if you were jealous, I could prove to you we belong together. But of course you weren’t jealous. You want me to be happy, even if it’s not with you. I’d be happy for you if you found someone else too. But — what we’ve got, it’s not going away.”

“I don’t think I can fill all your needs.”

“Do you know what my needs are? Have you ever asked?”

She hadn’t. She’d always been afraid of the answer.

“I need trust, loyalty, comfort,” he said. “I need to know someone’s always in my corner. Beside me, not ahead of me. Mostly I need commitment, that you’re as invested in this as I am. That’s why I want to get married. I thought maybe if boyfriend/girlfriend was too hard to grasp, something more concrete would be easier. To me, marriage is an ante in. Something to show we’re not here for the good times but the bad ones.”

“There’s someone out there better for you than me.” Hearing the words out loud for the first time, speaking this belief she'd held inside her for most of her life, she realized how ridiculous it sounded. 

“Maybe, but they’re not here, and I’m not looking. And even if in five, ten years, someone crosses one of our paths, that’s not going to change what we have. No one can reach our rank.”

“What if I don’t want to have sex with you?”

“Then we won’t have sex.”

She finally glanced up at him, wary. It was hard to believe just hours ago, he’d been inside her, and she’d wanted it and enjoyed it and didn’t freak out. There was no telling what tomorrow would be like, or a year from now. If she’d go through phases of repulsion or amorousness. If she’d think she wanted sex but then afterward realize she hadn’t. If her body would betray her mind.

“I’m more than my cock, Clarke. I like sex but I like you more. As long as you let me show you how much I love you in some way, however you want, I’ll be fine. I’ll adapt.”

“You’d be perfectly okay if I never touched you again.”

His jaw twitched as if he disliked the thought, but he said, “As long as you give me something. I need to know you love me as much as I love you. I don’t care what that looks like.”

“I do love you. I’m more than in love with you, too. But —” She couldn’t finish the thought. It seemed impossible, the kind of relationship they had, whose love fell beyond all spectrums society had offered them. More than in love. He was right: no one could outrank them.

He offered her a towel to dry her hands. “We don’t have to make all the rules right now. We can figure it out as we go.”

That afternoon, for the first time, she wanted him. She knew it was temporary, perhaps only a one-time deal, residual hormones from her cycle, adrenaline from their earlier discussion, the simple newness of knowing the breadth of his feelings for her. She let him take off her clothes, look at her in full sunlight. He buried his face between her legs, brought her to release. She tasted herself on his tongue as he slid inside her, protected this time, her thighs bracketing his hips. He asked if it was okay and she said it was. She watched his eyes close in pleasure, thrilled she could do this for him whenever she wanted, that he would never force her or coax her into it, or resent her for not desiring him the same way he did her. She was not broken. She was not missing something other people had. She would never have to sacrifice her happiness or comfort. She loved differently, but just as deeply, and she could have everything she wanted.

A month later, they were in line at the courthouse, trapped between two narrow belt barriers, Clarke checking her phone constantly and getting grouchier by the minute.

“I have a meeting at one-thirty,” she said. “And my parking meter is going to run out.”

“I have to be on the other side of town in an hour." Bellamy was wearing his uniform, and she was in her nicest blazer and slacks. She was even wearing heels and makeup. They probably should have planned a bit better, but she was downtown for a prospect meeting and had texted him to ask when his lunch break was. The bus depot was a block from the courthouse, and she’d found a parking spot right out front. It seemed like the planets had aligned.

 _Nowish,_ he’d replied.

_Wanna get hitched??_

She had already gotten in line when he arrived. They signed for a marriage license and asked if a judge might be able to do a speedy ceremony. Finally they were ushered into the courtroom, and the judge made quick work of the vows. A janitor was their witness. They forgot rings, but it didn’t matter. They could save up and buy nice ones, and maybe eventually throw a wedding, or more likely a small reception, and plan a honeymoon. They each said “I do” and then kissed, and as soon as the deed was done, they rushed out of the building.

“Hold on,” she said, dragging him into a spot with good light. She turned on her camera and faced it toward them. “We need at least one wedding pic.”

They took three, one smiling, one kissing, and one with silly faces. Later, she’d post them with the caption, _Got married nbd,_ and she was willing to bet money Bellamy would reply with the entire “mawwiage” monologue from _The Princess Bride._

“Have a good rest of your day, husband,” she said. The bus depot was in the opposite direction, but she was reluctant to let go of his hand.

“Good luck with your meeting, wife.”

He gave her a few more quarters for the meter, and kissed her goodbye, with the promise to pick up dinner on the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on tumblr and twitter as bettsfic.


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